Mississippi River Photos from the iPhone 12

I recently got an iPhone 12 Pro. It's the first time I've really had "new" and "current" equipment - my normal camera is about 15 years old, and I'm generally a "use what you've got" sort of photographer. When I was out along the banks of the Mississippi River with my boys last week, I started playing with the wide angle lens and a few of the effects.

Here are a few images that are straight from my phone. I always at least gently edit my images, but these have not been cropped or had any density/contrast adjustments. The most I did to them was adjust the exposure as I was in the process of making the photo; I did nothing in post.

[click image to enlarge]

River Tree


Rail Bridge


Washed-Out Ash


Rower


Rain-Splattered Beaches


Tiny Waves


Driftwood


Driftwood and Ice


Frozen Pebbles


Trees

The "silvertone" effect in these images makes the images a little too painterly for me: click on and zoom in to some of the larger images to see the over-sharpening happening at the edge of higher contrast areas. But I like the overall contrast it provided, although the middle values get a little lost (which kills me a bit as a photography professor who's always preaching about proper tonal range).

We'll see if I end up playing around more with my phone in a professional manner...

Bryant Lake Bowl Drone Video

You've all seen this. I know I'm late to the party. But I just HAD to make sure I shared this here, as it's fantastic.

Direct link: youtu.be/VgS54fqKxf0

This was posted on YouTube less than a week ago, and as of posting here, it has 1.2 million views there, as well as more on Facebook and Twitter. (As of 2 days ago, the Star Tribune was saying it already had a total of 2.8 million aggregate views. One of the original versions on Twitter has 6.8 million views as of today.)

This may be updated over time, but here's a link on the Bryant Lake Bowl website that shares some of the media attention that the video has recieved:

A drone video shot in a Minneapolis bowling alley was hailed as an instant classic. One Hollywood veteran said it “adds to the language and vocabulary of cinema.”

NEW YORK TIMES

KARE 11

FOX9

The VERGE

NEW YORK POST

PIONEER PRESS

GIZMONDO

BROBIBLE

DIGITALTRENDS

NEWS18

MSP MAGAZINE

INDY100

IRISH EXAMINER

BELFAST TELEGRAPH

GAMESPOT

BBC

I've been seeing it EVERYWHERE on social media:

"Guardians of the Galaxy” filmmaker James Gunn tweeted the clip to his 800,000+ followers, saying he wanted the filmmakers "to come with us to London later this year when we shoot Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3." And Elijah Wood commented "HOLY SHIT" in his retweet of the video to his nearly 1 million followers.

Nice work, Rally Studios! (Jay Christensen cinematographer, Anthony Jaska director)

Curtains Create Pinhole Camera

There are many instances of pinhole cameras being formed in darkened rooms to project the outside on a far wall. (Abelardo Morell has done work like this for example.) Two days ago, someone on Reddit shared what was happening with their curtains, and it was pretty fun:

That's the street below being projected sort of "accidentally" on his ceiling as a pinhole camera would do. Here's a video of the street below "moving" on his ceiling:

The curtains in my room create a "natural" pinhole camera that projects images of the street below onto my ceiling from r/woahdude

Click here to see it on Reddit if that embedded video doesn't work.

My New Headshot is Live

The Hamline DMA ("Digital Media Arts") website has been updated, and my new headshot is in the faculty section along with the 3 other great professors I teach with.

Click here for a larger view.

Here's a link to the DMA faculty page for more.